Apple Begs the 64-Bit Question

With its iPhone 5S, Apple begs the question of what a mobile handset can do with 64-bit addressability. I suspect the answer is, "Not much."

Apple's iPhone 5S, arriving within days, begs the question of what can you do with 64-bit memory addressability in a smartphone. I suspect the answer is, "Not much."

When ARM announced its V8 architecture for a 64-bit core the handwriting was on the wall. This was all about servers where the software stack is pretty much entirely based on 64-bit address spaces.

ARM and as many as a dozen of its SoC partners are gearing up an interesting initiative here that will bear its first fruits in 2014. So far, Intel still has the lead in low-power servers.

But mobile? There is no 64-bit software here yet. We are not approaching the 4 Gbyte main memory limit of today's 32-bit systems.

Analysts I talked to, such as Kevin Krewell of The Linley Group and David Kanter of Real World Tech, said they don't expect to see any user value in a 64-bit A7 chip in the iPhone 5S. This is all about plowing the field for a future ecosystem. However Kanter noted there could be some performance advantages for simplifying virtual memory operations in devices at or above a Gbyte of main memory.

Far be it from me to be the Luddite who says smartphones will never need more than 4 GBytes of memory. A better question is: What could they do with that much memory?

Apple took a stab at that question when it also opened the door to a sensor fusion API riding on top of its new M7 sensor controller. Samsung had a jump on Intel with all the sensor bells and whistles in its latest Galaxy S phones. Now, Apple is calling the iPhone faithful to think different about what it could deliver.

I stopped wearing watches years ago and have no interest in the new health and fitness devices popping up. But I don't doubt something interesting could emerge there someday.

I suspect no one really knows what to do -- that's compelling -- with a smartphone that sports 64-bit memory spaces and biometrics, including Apple. The Cupertino company is just opening a door and seeing what passes through it. Like the iPhone maker, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, too.

Back then when App store was opened, developers can register to become an iPhone apps developers and submit apps to sell, who would anticipate what the apps store has turned out and Apple has become.

64-bit mobile devices are seemingly overengineered. Ease of memory addressing may improve I/O throughput; yet, it would not be significant enough. What made Apple to decide to go for 64 bits on iPhone 5S. I guess Apple has been innovating and be first of almost everything. Now, Apple becomes the first company to launch a mobile device with 64 bits processor. Big deal! IMO, 64 bits mobile device will not beneift regular users. However, if the device is in the hand of curious engineers, I am sure there will be a lot of hacking going. Maybe, we will see a iPhone 5S being used as a regular computer with Linux being the OS. Maybe, there is a powerful parallel computer build with 1k iPhone 5S.

Sometimes, platform makers just need to open the door and the future will take us to where we are supposed to be.

PS: To Apple, what's the benefit? Maybe, Apple is checking out 64bits ARM to prepare for future Mac.

Hey Rick: i didn't think that I would ever be interested in some kind of fitness app until my husband and I both bought FitBits. We are an extremely competitive family and the powerful thing about FitBit is that it shares your daily activity numbers with friends in your network. So if I slack off during the week, my friends and relatives will taunt me. Sounds sort of sick, but it is actually motivating me to work out more (and come in first!)

I've long thought that smartphones could effectively replace regular PCs for a good portion of the population. They clearly already have the power to do so, the CPUs in them may be weak compared to Intel's current PC CPUs, but those provide far far more power than the average person needs - I'm talking about those the people who use their PCs only for email, web browsing, online shopping, Facebook, writing term papers, managing photos, etc. This would obviously be inappropriate for the the engineers reading EETimes, so please don't tell me that such a solution wouldn't meet your needs. Even if it only works for 50% of current PC buyers that's a massive market for Apple to tap, and a huge potential problem for Microsoft.

The reason a smartphone doesn't replace a PC already for these people is that the interface sucks. The screen is way too small (even a phablet screen) and the keyboard is terrible for trying to do lots of typing. So provide a way to connect your phone to a big monitor, which has USB ports on it to connect a standard keyboard and mouse. Thunderbolt or HDBaseT 2.0 would work great for this, and either could be done with a Lightning interface cable that plugs into a Thunderbolt monitor or HDBaseT 2.0 supporting TV set in a year or two. When the iPhone detects this connection, it starts an 'app' that is basically the full OS X GUI, including all the userland libraries that OS X apps expect.

I think this is coming, but you really want 64 bits before you do it, simply because you need more memory in a phone to run a desktop GUI and desktop apps, and you don't want to bother short term support for a 32 bit ARM API for those desktop apps. This would be really simple for Apple to do. OS X already supports fat binaries, it could start producing fat x86/ARM64 binaries. iOS is based on OS X, and could be modified fairly easily to support almost all OS X binaries that were recompiled as a fat binary.

Gee, I'm amazed to hear that, over the years, each new generation of CPU (8, 16, 32, etc.) has only brought me increased address space, and nothing more. I could have sworn that my 16 bit CPU could add 16 bit numbers a lot faster than my 8 bit one could. But, perhaps I was mistaken. Now, I suppose now one really cares about adding 64 bit numbers faster but, wait, doesn't fast encryption have something to do with math opeations on large numbers? But, I'm sure that the author of this article knows all about how fundamental security mechanism, such as secure hash algorithms won't be able to take advantage of 64 bit math and how this code will work just well on older, 32 bit CPUs. I'm so glad I have a a technical magazine like EE Times to keep me fully informed by such knowlegable authors.

There are times when it would be convenient to have the FitBit pedometer functions simply as an iPhone app. But I think the app will supplement rather than replace the demand for the FitBit hardware devices. There are exercise situations in which wearing the FitBit device might be fine, but carrying your smartphone would be problematic. It will be nice to have both options.